Posted
by
samzenpuson Wednesday November 14, 2012 @09:59PM
from the check-it-out dept.

Billly Gates writes "IE 10 just hit the final preview yesterday for Windows 7. Windows XP and Windows Vista support has been dropped. Most slashdotters have a complex relationship with Internet Explorer. Many of us hate it but have to use it in the office. Microsoft had tried last year to make IE good again with the release of IE 9 which had some fanfare on slashdot, such as hardware acceleration and better standards compliance. MS even launched a full campaign to get us to switch. IE 10 is supposed to continue the new process and promises to be much faster and support more HTML 5, CSS 3, W3C HTML 5.1 and CSS 3.1 with a score of 320 on HTML5test. As a comparison, last years IE 9 only scored 138. "

Disagreed. Installing anything requires clicking a banner at the bottom (a click that takes 10 seconds to register), then going through some security scan, then clicking on a dialog, and then clicking cancel on the 3 other dialogs I got because the lag made me think the first click didn't register.

And if you're on a server... Fuggiduhbadit! You'll have to enable anywhere from 1 to 12 security exceptions by clicking a few times and typing a website address, each. Then you have to reload the page, and get past the security warning that pops up every time. THEN you get to go through the above process.

Funny enough that isn't far from the truth, although to be more accurate today it would probably be Chrome instead of Firefox. Working here at the shop I get to see pretty much all walks of life and within the last 5 years I have seen a pretty fundamental shift, whereas before it was only the geeky types that had an alternate browser now EVERYBODY has one, even the little old folks that don't like change.

Now I can't tell you why, maybe its the fact like morons they fragmented the hell out of the userbase and people didn't like that they couldn't run the same IE on both their new laptop and their old desktop, maybe its the UI changes that frankly suck, who knows, but I can tell you pretty much ONLY the SMBs use IE anymore around here and even many of them are moving away from IE.

This is why I don't get why the EU and others are having a fit over IE, its fucking dying already, what is the point of kicking it as it quivers and bleeds? it would be like having a shitfit over the blink tag in Netscape after AOHell bought it and run all the users off, seriously what is the point? IE is dying, the fat lady has not only sang she is down the street having a sammich, nobody uses that crap anymore unless they absolutely have to and even those are looking for an exit strategy. Let the damned thing just die in peace already, let it join WinME, Vista, and Win 8 on the fail pile and move on.

Statcounter and Net Applications are in agreement that the IE browser remains a strong global competitor on the laptop/desktop. Net Applications draws its stats from sites which have deep penetration into the mass consumer market.

[FYI: Net Applications posts a.41% share for Windows 8 and a 1% share for Linux. Not too shabby for an OS the geek claims no one is using.]

Note: W3Schools is a website for people with an interest for web technologies. These people are more interested in using alternative browsers than the average user. The average user tends to use the browser that comes preinstalled with their computer, and do not seek out other browser alternatives.

Tip: Global averages may not be relevant to your web site. Different sites attract different audiences. Some web sites attract professional developers using professional hardware, while other sites attract hobbyists using old computers.

I can tell you one of the reasons you are seeing more alternate browsers (at least chrome) is because of drive by installs and bundling.I am also seeing more alternate browsers in our shop and when there are problems with them I will suggest the users use IE instead (since it still seems to work). Some of them say that they prefer IE but that the other browser just suddenly appeared and they didn't know how to switch back.I have also seen a lot of the name brand computers (Del, Lenovo, Acer, etc.) coming pr

"I would like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Internet Explorer, is in fact, Mosaic/Internet Explorer or as I've recently taken to calling it Mosaic plus Internet Explorer."
-Richard M. Stallman

It's like the guy selling the best buggy whips in the era of the car. Or the crazy homeless guy spewing crap about Soviet communism will triumph over capitalism any day now. It's only been 20+ years since the Berlin wall fell. Why does IE anything even matter? It's not going to be on your Android phone, or iphone. Who cares?

It matters because we have to deliver content to several hundred sites via Web/Intranet, and we can't dictate the end user's infrastructure. They will invariably use IE as a standard. This is industry talking...

It matters because we have to deliver content to several hundred sites via Web/Intranet, and we can't dictate the end user's infrastructure.

But many end users will be glad to dictate their infrastructure to you. Starting from President/CEO and his VPs, and going down to program managers, and then to senior engineers... when your (IT) interests and their interests collide the IT will not be the winner. Those guys are bread winners, and IT is the cost center, with the sole purpose of supporting bread winners. They tell you what they have and you accomodate. Not the other way around.

For example, there may be a frantic phone call from one of your sales guys. He is trying to set up an elevator pitch since he just arranged for three minutes with the Big Customer. But his iPad cannot access your Web site!!! Disaster!!! Can you tell this sales guy that he should bring the customer in front of a company-issued laptop? These three minutes may well be on a golf course or when jogging. Nobody will be on your side (nobody who matters, at least.)

Besides, your Web delivery of materials will be just fine unless you go out of your way to support only this or that version of the browser.

For example, there may be a frantic phone call from one of your sales guys. He is trying to set up an elevator pitch since he just arranged for three minutes with the Big Customer. But his iPad cannot access your Web site!!! Disaster!!!

If your company's website doesn't already work on the iPad (or Android phone/tablet), your company's web developer(s) and IT supervisor should probably have been fired by now.

In theory, you could publich other browsers to the store. In fact, Mozilla is apparently working on a Windows Store App ("Metro") version of Firefox... but for some reason only for x86. Not sure what's up with that; they know how to do Firefox on ARM but for whatever reason are deciding not too.

who the hell uses IE as a web standard?
industry uses W3C... if you don't know that you likely won't even get a job as a web dev nowadays

No, the point is that it has to work on IE, whether or not IE is obeying W3C standards, because IE is what comes by default to low-information users, and IE is what is almost always used by businesses for Group Policy reasons. Thankfully, most businesses don't demand that IE6 be supported any more (though a few still do), but in many instances a website must at least display properly on IE8, even though that browser is absurdly outdated compared to everything else on the market. Remember, a lot of companies are still on Windows XP, and that can't even use IE9.

Not because you should use IE. Use what you like, that's what makes standards with multiple implementations great. But there are tons of things that simply aren't done because browsers don't provide the necessary infrastructure, or because it'd be extremely difficult. Like it or not, as a major browser, IE dictates a lot of what happens on the web, even if you don't personally use it.

IE better supporting standards means those standards are more likely to be used, which means that your standards-supporting browser will work better, faster, and take less development time. For the browser developers, not having to implement work arounds for web pages that work around IE bugs means more time can be spent on new features, so your own preferred browser gets better, faster. Web pages take less time to create, so they're better, and us developers can work on more interesting things than working around some weird focus bug. Maybe the Slashdot developers will even have time to implement UTF-8 support so we can all post Zalgo and smilies that accurately depict our feelings.

We have a major national network, and IE9 is the standard. It's not without problems, not all of Microsoft's making. I wonder how it will perform with add-ons like Adobe Reader XI (yes, we're required to use that too). With all that new functionality/compatibility, will IE10 take a performance it?

Yes, and that's mostly because Firefox developers steadfastly refuse to add integrated domain authentication, which a lot of corporations use for their intranet access. The other component is group policies; Which again, Mozilla in its infinite wisdom has made its product neigh-impossible for administrators to configure and control remotely. Open Source often fails in corporate environments not because corporations are opposed to its licensing terms, but because the software can't have its functionality limited or modified via a centralized framework. They jabber on about how it's restricting the "freedoms" of its users, but nobody has freedom at work. It's work, dammit, not a playground, and your IT staff needs to be able to control and restrict things -- not because they're some kind of authoritarian jerks but because corporate environments have a very different set of requirements than consumer environments.

Internet Explorer would be dead by now if Mozilla and friends would just get with the program and include group policies and the ability to restrict software functionality (like automatic updates!) from a centralized source. But the community keeps bringing it back because it simply refuses to listen to what corporations ask for.

Firefox supports integrated domain authentication on windows. The big difference between it and other browsers like IE and Chrome is that in Firefox you have to whitelist every domain you'd like it to authenticate to.

Apparently you have never seen the sites button for the Local Intranet tab in the Internet Options control panel. It's where you can specify the "list of domains". IE just makes assumptions unless the user has specified otherwise or is overridden by a policy. And when you make assumptions...

Okay, now multiply that by 96,000 workstations. Oh wait, you don't think your users can be trusted to follow those steps? Well, it's a good thing we have Active Directory and PAC files to upda--oh, you mean Firefox doesn't have those? Oh. You mean, you have to update the file manually, by patching it? For every user?

Hmm. Well... I guess it's a good thing you didn't make any assumptions then about how easy it would be.

Not exactly. With internet explorer, IWA is transparent to the user and administrator alike; You can set entire domains or subdomains to use it and be done with it. Firefox' support is clunky, and requires a list of every DNS domain, not every Active Directory domain which doesn't always match DNS records. As well, should you want the list to be updated, you have to remotely modify the configuration file of firefox for every user account on every workstation. Microsoft's implimentation is self-updating, automatic, and doesn't require organizing special deployments and patching systems to keep the list up to date.

So yes, it's possible to get Firefox working with IWA, but not exactly practical. Supporting Firefox is labor-intensive.

Internet Explorer would be dead by now if Mozilla and friends would just get with the program and include group policies and the ability to restrict software functionality (like automatic updates!) from a centralized source. But the community keeps bringing it back because it simply refuses to listen to what corporations ask for.

Besides that I doubt IE would be dead, I also don't think that's a good thing.

Why is it always that competing products have to be killed? It's not just with browsers, it's with other software and hardware too (think "iPad-killer" kind of stuff).

This looks great to me. There is choice, there is competition, and there are four popular choices meaning no single browser can define the web like IE did with their IE6-specific code. IE is still competing in this market, down to a 22% level, which means they have to really work to stay alive. And we see that with the vast advances MS has made with their browser.

I don't like IE, tried it recently again (new laptop with Win7) and it just didn't work right. Somehow the UI was way too cluttered for me, so I went back to Firefox. Other people may like IE, well good for them. It's not that bad a browser any more. Microsoft is actively developing it, is adding new features, and now they're pretty much done catching up to the competition in that field they can start trying to surpass the competition by adding innovative features. And if those are good, FF will copy them again, just like IE copied a lot from FF and other browsers.

That's what competition is doing to you. Just killing off all competitors, and have FF be the >90% browser will bring us back to the late 90s and early 00s, the heydays of IE6. With a stagnant web, little to no innovation. It's not something I am longing for, at all. If anything Chrome is currently the one to go after.

IE, typically the one and only browser installed on new computers, use is far more prevalent in the US than in Europe for example.

Now I assume that Americans are, on average, just as competent and knowledgeable as Europeans when it comes to alternative browsers (that browser selection screen doesn't seem to do much; MS just got fined again for failing to make it work). So I'd say there is your proof: many Americans choose IE over the alternatives.

There are lots of people in the EU still using IE. And as choice is mandatory there, obviously they chose to use it.

Sorry this is not my argument. Using IE is like pulling teeth after using a real browser. If it had been my comment I would question the reasons why someone is using IE, or not choosing something else. The reality is I suspect all knowledge and capable computer users are using [choosing] an alternative browser, all the browser choice box does is reduce some of the worst excesses, but then by the very nature of a bundled browser. Choosing an alternative browser is always opt-in [amongst other things].

I have the gradients here on slashdot. In addition, I have the rounded corners, the javascript, the baloon on the bottom and it is smooth and fast. In IE 8 I have none of that and a limited javascript run cough Jscript cough to change the comments, rough corners, and it is chop chop chop with more than 50 comments etc.

In other words from where I am it, it performs no different than Chrome or Firefox. I ran FutureMarks HTML 5 benchmark peacekeeper

Choice is a illusion. Get me the number of people who actively choose to use IE over Chrome and Firefox.
Not the people who use it because it was pre-installed on their computer.

Irrelevant.

The key point is that the market share is well-divided. Web site authors can't code to a specific browser, and no one browser can dictate the course of the technology. Sites have to code to standards, and browsers have to implement standards, and collaborate to define new standards.

This means that choice is real enough to accomplish what it really needs to accomplish -- require the industry to focus on standards and cooperative competition, since no one is in a position to dominate. And th

Why is it always that competing products have to be killed? It's not just with browsers, it's with other software and hardware too (think "iPad-killer" kind of stuff).

Take a look at the state of the art in software engineering right now. Now realize that if we built houses like that, the first wood pecker would destroy civilization. It's duplication of effort -- rather than develop one tool that does its job very well, we develop twenty tools that do the same job sorta passably okay. A lot of this is thanks to the fractally stupid idea of intellectual property, but there are other reasons. Now you're right -- competition is good. We see this kind of thing all the time in

There are hundreds of ways to design and build a house - and houses are indeed being built in hundreds of different ways. There is no "one size fits all". Indeed OS software gets forked all the time, alternative projects are started, and often more than one survives. Just like in a real ecosystem, diversity brings strength and resilience..

Huh. I notice that all the building materials for those "built in hundreds of different ways" come in a rather small number of varying sizes, like "two by four". And there's rules for the construction of these homes that, while flexible, ensure safety and reliability of assembly.

Just like in a real ecosystem, diversity brings strength and resilience..

You haven't programmed using Windows APIs. You should try it some time, I think you'd like it -- it's packed with all kinds of diverse APIs and ways of doing things. That's really what's so nice about Windows standards... there's so

Nature tells us that in the overwhelming majority of cases, mutations (aka diversity) do not give an advantage.

Have you ever looked at the massive level of diversity in nature? Even what we call "species" and choose to view as cohesive aren't, really... they're just a collection of diverse individuals who have barely enough commonality to be able to breed successfully... most of the time. And the sheer number of species is staggering -- and important, because there is strength in diversity.

In a more industrial context, the USSR tried to "optimize" production of all sorts of goods by doing exactly what you say th

In a more industrial context, the USSR tried to "optimize" production of all sorts of goods by doing exactly what you say the software industry ought to be doing: standardize on one design, build one big factory.

Funny, I'd read the exact opposite - that they insisted on local production of goods even when it'd make more sense to centralize them in one big factory, and that's what did them in.

In a more industrial context, the USSR tried to "optimize" production of all sorts of goods by doing exactly what you say the software industry ought to be doing: standardize on one design, build one big factory.

Funny, I'd read the exact opposite - that they insisted on local production of goods even when it'd make more sense to centralize them in one big factory, and that's what did them in.

They did early on, but by the 70s and 80s they were very much into the "one enormous factory" mode, precisely because the cottage approach didn't work. But even when they did try to localize production, they still attempted extreme standardization, or at least had extreme standardization -- it may have been the result of lack of incentive for innovation rather than a party directive.

Now have an other look on mobile, where the new IE is all the different forks of Webkit that do not get updates. Replacement rate of mobiles was about ones every 2 years, with smartphones (because they are more expensive) this is going to be higher.

And webdevelopers already use webkit only features. Or are using it in a way which make it webkit only (-webkit *). Even though it already is a standard and other browsers support it.

Yes, and that's mostly because Firefox developers steadfastly refuse to add integrated domain authentication, which a lot of corporations use for their intranet access.

It's implemented, just not enabled by default.

Go to about:config -> search for "network.automatic-ntlm-auth.trusted-uris" -> add the domain. You can set it to a second-level domain, and anything underneath that works as well. And as of FF 14, you can set "network.automatic-ntlm-auth.allow-non-fqdn" and "network.negotiate-auth.allow-non-fqdn" to true, to allow it to work with anything that doesn't have a dot in it.

Not trying to argue your point, because the rest is both accurate and valid if a little over-strenuous (although I doubt IE would be dead even if FF supported every single one of its features, corporate inertia can be very strong), just trying to inform about something that seems to be a frustration for you.

Firefox certainly does some puzzling things though. For the NTLM example, the main (valid) complaint was that older versions of Windows, or current versions configured a certain way, would send insecure hashes of your credentials. But, since the browser is running on your operating system, I imagine it's fairly easy to tell whether it's configured that way or not (at worst requiring administrator access, which could be handled by an elevated stub program).

Young people 5 years ago HATED IT as they remember IE 6 and how fucked up it was, but with newer verions not sucking why change? Old people use it who do not know what HTML is or CSS. The blue E is the internet etc!

IE always will be the most popular browser whether you like it or not. It works! Might as well be happy it acts like everyone else on the playground now so webmasters can move on and we can finally give a reason for XP loyalists who use IE to leave so we can fin

integrated domain auth isn't that big a deal, on firefox they just have to put their pass in and click remember. if you want it to happen automatically you need to add the domain to about::config somehow, i don't care enough to figure it out but it probably isn't that hard.

Users would entail corporate and consumer groups of users. It was proper to distinguish between differing environments.

Hmm... how come macs aren't more popular then? Could it be because people are already familiar with the systems they use at work, and when they go home, they make purchasing decisions based on that familiarity? Nah, that's crazy talk!

Crazy talk? Whether it is crazy or not doesn't change the fact that very few people at home have to worry about HIPPA, SOX, and SEC regulatory measures, lost profits from systems being down, lawsuits from intrusions that gain access to customer data, lost revenue from secretes like bid proposals or designs, launch dates for products, legal strategies, and a skew of other issues most corporations have to worry about.

Now I know some consumers run windows servers, but do you really think they are representativ

I'd like to begin by saying good job devs! As a developer: Yay, another version to support! IE Support already requires coddling especially for the long in the tooth IE6 & 7; granted IE9 is much better but there are still rough patches with border radius and gradients [stackoverflow.com] are used as well as transitions [mozilla.org], see the table at the bottom. CSS transitions would be a very welcome addition. Maybe we can create a betting pool for how long until the next incarnation?

With their current strategy what are the chances it'll be a Windows 8 requirement? I'm off to find that guy who read the bones for Obama to do a browser reading.

Because you vill love our Windows that are made with a table saw and painted with colors from a kindergarten! Nice borders, avast! The new fashion is crude and straight and ugly, just like most of our cities are.

But since I have to even with IE9/10 because of the proliferation of the crappy ass IE's that they've produced in the past, I'm not going to be overwhelmed by the fact that they have finally started to get it right. Started I say IE10 320 vs Chrome 457.

Honestly, isn't not just for graphics - it's for the whole fantastic class of problems that can be solved via GLSL shaders - GPU accelerated calculations in JS - this is simply so amazingly powerful, IE 10 is essentially worthless without it.

As people start doing high performance computing and solving wildly complex problems in the browser with GPU accelerated JS, the browser will continue to emerge as the platform of choice for a wonderfully wide range of applications. IE will sit off to the side, largely ignored (except for certain "enterprise" business users) and will become even more irrelevant.

I'd expect to start seeing more and more web sites that want to do these things refuse to support IE at all, the shims and plugins just aren't worth screwing with.

I would argue that most power users either have turned WebGL off, or will in the near future; exposing a new attack surface to the web will inevitably lead to exploits. Moreover Its highly unlikely that WebGL will become significant in the next 2-3 years, particularly if the mainstream (IE) audience isn't supported.

ie isn't the mainstream any more and i really hope that turning off features like webgl make it into the other browsers soon so people can stop listing this as a concern. how hard is it to block a tag?

Only partially trolling. I'm just waiting for you to explain why anyone should solve those problems in a browser instead of doing it server side and shipping the results to the browser. Like others have said, GLSL is compiled in kernel mode by the video drivers. Exposing kernel mode code to the internet is the worst idea from a security perspective since ActiveX. In fact I would say it's worse since video drivers get next to no security hardening and ActiveX at least ran in user mode.

Honestly, isn't not just for graphics - it's for the whole fantastic class of problems that can be solved via GLSL shaders - GPU accelerated calculations in JS - this is simply so amazingly powerful, IE 10 is essentially worthless without it.

WebGL poses serious issues with security, because it allows untrusted code to basically talk directly to the graphics card. Most graphics drivers are barely stable, much less secure; they are written with performance in mind (gotta eke out that edge in Anandtech's FPS

The browser is a crappy computing platform. For just about anything beyond simple games and basic calculations, you're better off writing in a real language instead of JavaScript.

There's a fairly widely used browser that both supports WebGL and supports applications written in "real language" (e.g., C) and compiled to native code, from a fairly large company that originally came to prominence because of its web search engine.

Yes.. I cant believe it either, but the damn thing is actually really good. Chrome is a mess. Firefox is the middleman, and IE10 is faster, smoother than both of them. IE10 GPU acceleration is incredibly superior in every way.

I disagree. THe download Firefox page renders much better and downloads quicker than ever!... on a more serious note I notice a big difference in smoothness. As an experiment open Chrome and use the up and down arrows on www.slashdot.org? Now do the same with IE 9? One is smooth with a few chops. The other is chop chop chop. Firefox is starting to enable this by default too which is now.

Sites that have tons of pictures like entertainment mag sites are best with IE 9 for that reason. While Chrome is best fo

i think their refusal to support old, but still very popular, versions of the windows OS will be there death knell as users of XP and vista will be forced to switch to Firefox or chrome to keep there favourite sites fully working. Similarly with DirectX 10/11

i think their refusal to support old, but still very popular, versions of the windows OS will be there death knell as users of XP and vista will be forced to switch to Firefox or chrome to keep there favourite sites fully working. Similarly with DirectX 10/11

Do you think it's possible that supporting the older OS's would begin to weigh the browsers down?

IE really has come a very very long way since v7, and has gone from being a totally backwards abomination that impedes progress and gives webmasters nightmares to being a mostly OK browser. Outside of royalty-free codec support (which everyone knew MS would drag their feet on) there's only one way that its backwardness still impacts me: MathML.

Gecko-based browsers have had native support for over a decade (enabled by default starting with Mozilla milestone 0.9.9). Safari has had native support for a year and a half, and Chrome is finally about to release its first version with native support. But IE only has access via a third-party plugin [dessci.com]. Worse, the plugin was broken with the release of IE9 [archive.org]. A year ago, the developer made a "preview release" version of the plugin that's supposed to work with IE 9, but it's buggy and inconsistent and hasn't been updated.

It's frustrating that almost 15 years after MathML was standardized we've still got browser developers dragging their feet.

Like IE or hate it, it still has the best Javascript profiler available today -- and it's built in. It beats the ever loving crap out of Firebug's pathetic profiler, and presents timing data in a proper tree with better function name resolution than Chrome's.

It's other development tools are marginal though. Debug your app in Firebug, and fire up IE to check it for compatibility and find the slow bits.

We can't have more modern sites because IE is updated so slowly. By the time IE10 comes out for an OS people actually use, IE9 will have spent 2 years in production without any updates to its capabilities. The corporate inertia is coming from Redmond not anywhere else.